


Keeping Score

by Truth



Category: Firefly
Genre: Cheating, Gen, Murder, lying, swindling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-01
Updated: 2009-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 06:31:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/pseuds/Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The payoff is never the point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping Score

_May Fong_

Dark hair swung free, framing a pale, pretty face that didn’t answer the promise made by her patronymic. The severe line of her bangs was softened by the delicate arch of black brows above large, trusting brown eyes. She looked very young and a little frightened, with bright red lipstick that was slightly blurred at the edges, and heavy eyeliner, slightly crooked and far too dark.

The reward was 25,000 platinum upon safe return of May Fong to her husband’s family – 10,000 platinum for any news of her whereabouts or the identity of the men who had ambushed and kidnapped her on her way to her husband’s funeral service and an additional 150,000 for the restoration of Wai Fong’s heavily bejeweled funerary urn.

 _Charity Halthamston_

Long red hair fell from a messy bun to curl over one shoulder, a bright, mischievous smile revealing perfect, even teeth. The reward this time included land deeds and a notation that dead was just as good as alive. There was no reason offered and, with the full amount of the reward cited, no questions would be asked.

The two posters hung beside a large, well-lit mirror, the focal point of the cramped cabin, each held to the wall with a thick clamp that spoke of further pages beneath. Hardcopy was still used on the frontier planets when you wanted to spread the word, and the pages showed wear, fading and a distinct dog-earing that in no way detracted from the pretty, remarkably similar faces.

Above the mirror was a heavy rifle, part of the barrel melted away by either a misfire or some other accident and the stock scored heavily by what might have been a large knife. The contrast was an odd one, considering the careless state of the small table beneath the mirror. Various bottles and jars were strewn apparently at random across the surface, paints and dyes, rouge and gloss, powder and an enormous box overflowing with jewelry that spilled across an entire array of combs and enough false nails to keep one of those Hindu goddesses stylishly accoutered for years.

There was a bunk across the room, half hidden by an astonishing variety of dresses, smocks and ship-suits in an amazing variety of sizes and shapes and the floor was strewn with boots, shoes, sandals and other, less describable footwear.

The walls themselves were the industrial grey of most working ships, another contrast to the explosion of color and shape across the room. The rifle was not the strangest of trophies to be secured against the dull metal by far. Above the hatch hung a porcelain mask, long feathers curving along one side and with a heavy crack down the center that completely spoiled the carefully painted flames that had one made it a thing of fantasy.

Beside it hung a pair of poorly knitted baby shoes in thick wool dyed an unfortunate shade of orange. They in turn were draped carelessly over the elaborately gilded edge of a miniature portrait of a dark-skinned young man wearing a solemn frown.

The small cabin was a gallery of contradiction, pretty gilded treasures displayed beside what looked like trash. A broken goblet was secured just beneath a pendant that glittered with some fantastic, inner light and just beyond it, half concealed by the trailing edge of a lacey sleeve, could be seen an elaborately carved fan of what looked to be ivory.

The owner of the cabin, white-blonde curls tousled against the flat pillow of her bunk, fingers brushing the edges of a boot dyed a bright purple and a scant centimeter from the floor, looked almost as out of place as her treasures. Clad in the ugly jumpsuit of a working crewman of a registered freighter, there was no varnish on her stubby, much bitten nails and no trace of paint on her tired face. Jewelry, for all that it was strewn here and there about the room and even mounted on the walls, was notably absent from her person.

Her appearance and tired sprawl made it obvious that this was a woman who had been trodden down by hard work and lack of respect, dull and respectable, without dreams or ambition and frowning even in her sleep. Even with the evidence of a life both wild and strange everywhere around her, it was nearly impossible to believe that _this_ woman belonged in this cabin - so perhaps she didn't.

It takes a very special woman to be false even in her sleep, so careful with her dreams that they never make even a flicker on her face. A woman who keeps a record of every place she's been and every face she's worn, every official description so that she's never the same woman twice. Every con is different, every plan carefully constructed with a specific goal in mind, every patsy checked, chosen and wrung for whatever they could possibly have of worth before being discarded like a broken plaything.

The tiny cabin is scattered about with bits and pieces in a way strongly reminiscent of the room of a child, their toys all spread out where they can be seen and touched and felt - entirely unsafe for any sort of off-planet travel and somehow making the most perfect sort of sense. Everything _important_ , everything precious, is perfectly obvious yet, to the eye of anyone save the child itself, it is nothing but a senseless mess.

There is no money on the dressing table, no bank-book in the half-open cabinet to one side. The woman with the worn innocence of a hard worker at the end of a long shift doesn't find any significance in the money she's accumulated, though it does make things so much easier. The money is useful, but it's not how she keeps score.

It's not whether you win or lose, after all, but how you play the game - and she plays against the rest of the worlds with rules of her own making and her ever-mounting score is visible only in the bits and pieces that can be glimpsed on the walls of a tiny cabin in a long-abandoned and carefully concealed ship that will never see space again.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/sickficfest/profile)[**sickficfest**](http://community.livejournal.com/sickficfest/)


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